FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SOMALIS - PAGE 5

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- United Nations forces drew their first blood on Friday in more than two months of service, killing at least one Somali gunman and wounding several others. The incident, involving a Pakistani battalion guarding this city`s international airport, occurred as U.S. Marines hovered offshore awaiting the command to move in and begin safeguarding food shipments to the country`s starving. It underlined chaotic conditions the Marines will find on landing and raised fears that foreign troops might be more likely to come under attack from renegade gunmen angered by the killing of a comrade.

Pirates who seized a weapon-laden Ukrainian cargo ship off Somalia have not engaged in a shoot-out that left three of them dead, as claimed by Kenyan maritime officials, a representative for the group said Tuesday. There has been no dissension aboard the ship, said Sugale Ali Omar, who identified himself as a spokesman for the pirates and said he was aboard the hijacked vessel. "There was no shooting and there is no fighting among us," Omar said in a telephone interview. He also said the pirates have no plans to sell any of the 33 tanks or other ammunition as long as they receive $20 million in ransom, which he likened to a "tax" against foreigners using Somalia's waters.

A group of 33 Somali men has filed a lawsuit against two major rental car companies on claims they were discriminated against because of their race, religion and national origin. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court against National Car Rental System Inc. and Alamo Rent A Car. The plaintiffs allege that they were not addressed by their names but were called "prayer" by managers as a way of mocking their religious practice of praying several times a day. The men also were subjected to ethnic slurs, according to the lawsuit.

A new front in the war on terror has broken out on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, as a group of Islamists battled Somali warlords allied with Washington's aim of rooting out Muslim extremism from the region. In six days of some of the worst street combat since the central government collapsed in 1991, nearly 150 people have been killed, most of them noncombatants caught in machine-gun and artillery fire. On Friday morning, heavy shooting could be heard in some parts of the disintegrating capital, although the gunfire appeared to subside somewhat later in the day, according to Mogadishu residents reached by telephone from Kenya.

Passengers on MSC Cruises' Melody were partying under the starry midnight sky when armed pirates in a small speedboat attacked their luxury cruise liner last month in the Indian Ocean, and attempted to board the ship on rope ladders. "It was a movie scene," said Rick Sasso, President of MSC Cruises USA. Passengers were among the first to spot the pirates and even tried to thwart them by hurling deck furniture off the vessel and running to alert crew members, he said. The 2,000-passenger ship was sailing near the Seychelles Islands, about 700 miles from the coast of Somalia, in waters that international maritime officials considered safe.

They arrived as Greyhound nomads, Somali refugees riding buses in search of a new life in this chilly northern world by the Androscoggin River. Two years ago, not a single Somali lived in this stout little city in central Maine, a place of 35,000 people. Today the Somalis, slim and lithe, and black and Muslim, number perhaps 1,500 -- 300 arrived between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Their halal store stands cheek to jowl with Frenchy's barbershop, and a mosque has taken its place amid the town's towering Catholic churches.

Mohammed Farrah Aidid, the Somali clan leader whose fighters humiliated U.S. forces trying to arrest him in 1993, has died, apparently from wounds suffered a week ago in a Mogadishu street battle. He was buried on Friday on a small plot he owned near the line that divides Mogadishu, and which marked the northern limit of the area he controlled, even though he insisted he was president of all Somalia. A funeral procession wound through the streets, flanked by heavily armed pickup trucks.

In the last letter Sandi Jones received from her son, an Army Ranger stationed in Somalia, he told her not to worry. Since his arrival there in August, of his friends only one had been shot, in the leg and with shrapnel in his butt, he wrote. The worst part of being in Somalia, Sgt. Kenneth Thomas wrote, was the "extreme boredom" of sitting in a crowded hangar waiting to go on a mission. "The missions are done thoroughly, professionally and quickly," he said, in his letter dated Sept 16. "I don't think you should worry much.

Troubadour K'naan (Knaanmusic.com) ** (out of five stars) The buzz: Buoyed by the bouncy, roaring hit "If Rap Gets Jealous" (a rap-rock hybrid with guitar licks by Metallica's Kirk Hammett), K'naan is being positioned as an artist who will be ab le to accomplish what many others have tried and failed to do: gain indie cred while appealing to mainstream music fans. The verdict: The funny thing is, he may just do it. Likably energetic, K'naan has a commanding backstory: He escaped his war-torn home country of Somalia on its last commercial flight.

In a dramatic and unprecedented display of prowess, suspected Somali pirates operating deep in open waters have seized an oil tanker as long as an aircraft carrier, the U.S. military in the Middle East said Monday. The Liberian-flagged Sirius Star was hijacked and its multinational crew of 25 were kidnapped by pirates in the Arabian Sea on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles from the major port of Mombasa, Kenya. The ship appeared headed toward Somalia, the East African country from where many of the region's pirates set out on raids, according to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.